s % employers surveyed
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Companies who bring their employees with them in processes of change – and the world is changing ever faster – can achieve much better results.
CBI Director for Employment Affairs ” People have more voice and want more choice at work
Having cited its success during the recession – in particular pointing to the GKN example – we should look at what the causes of this change in employment relationship are. Primarily, the driver is that the modern working environment is very different from the one that defined the relationship between companies and workers in the past. In this section, we look at some of the key features of that change.
Modern workplace
“Our whole legislation is built on the presumption that work is bad,” says Vance Kearney, European vice president for human resources at Oracle, the software company. “That’s not the environment we work in.”
A communications revolution
Technology has changed the way that many people work and is likely to have further impacts over the coming years.
Teleconferences, videoconferencing, webinars and remote working systems have added to this trend, enabling skilled employees to work more flexibly by choosing where and when they want to work. In the services sector and in service-oriented roles in other sectors in particular, remote and mobile working, enabled by new technology, is increasingly standard. Five years ago just 13% of firms offered teleworking for employees in at least some roles some of the time. According to the CBI’s Employment Trends Survey almost six out of 10 (59%) now do
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this and it is most common (64%) in the smallest firms where it offers the great potential for reducing fixed costs.
Flexible Working Arrangements offered by employers
100 80 60 40 20 0
The structure of the UK economy has changed in many ways that make modern workplaces unrecognisable from even three decades ago. Manufacturing has been transformed into a high- tech, highly skilled sector while sectors like financial and business services, retail and information-based industries have grown substantially. At the same time, the occupational profile of the workforce has also changed – with many more people in managerial and professional occupations, and a much higher level of skills required for most jobs. This is the right choice – the UK has to compete on quality, not price. Technology too has changed the nature of work in
Why the new employment relationship developed
Neil Carberry
2005 2006 One or more
2007 Three or more
2008 2009 2010
2011
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